UNFURLING CHINA'S FENG-HUANG – THE 'OTHER' PHOENIX

 

A multicoloured feng-huang figurine that I brought back home from Hong Kong in 2005 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

One of the most famous legendary birds is the Egyptian phoenix, but traditional Chinese mythology has its very own equivalent of sorts – the 'other' phoenix, or, as it is commonly referred to in China, the feng-huang.

Just like the Egyptian phoenix, the feng-huang has been identified with a range of real birds. A very popular candidate is the familiar blue peacock Pavo cristatus (in depictions, the feng-huang's splendorous tail is frequently decorated with numerous ocelli or eyespots, thereby closely resembling the famously ornate train of this species).

 

A male blue peacock displaying its spectacular ocellated train, consisting of tail covert feathers (public domain)

A second candidate is Asia's crested argus pheasant Rheinardia ocellata, which is another large, exotic galliform species sporting eyespot-enhanced plumage.

In an earlier ShukerNature article (click here to read it), I revealed that there have been suggestions that Egypt's phoenix may have been based upon preserved skins of certain bird of paradise species brought back to Phoenicia from their far-off New Guinea homelands by early seagoing traders. Moreover, in 1967 a Chinese researcher postulated that one or more birds of paradise native to New Guinea may have been the basis for the feng-huang too.

 

A pair of crested argus pheasants painted by George Edward Lodge, the larger specimen being the male (public domain)

In a lengthy paper written principally in Chinese (and published by the Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology of Taipeh, Academia Sinica, during autumn 1967), Tzu-Chiang Chou based his assertion upon four primary points, summarized as follows:

1. According to Tzu-Chiang Chou, in the Chinese hieroglyphics of the Shang Dynasty (1384—1111 BC), the shape of the Chinese character termed ‘Feng’, denoting the phoenix, resembled the typical, effusively-plumed Paradisaea birds of paradise more closely than any other proposed contender for this fabulous bird’s identity.

2. The shape used for the character denoting the wind within this system of hieroglyphics was comparable to the Feng character, implying that the phoenix was in some way associated with the wind.

 

A sumptuous Chinese wall plaque in which a Chinese phoenix is portrayed in shimmering nacre or mother-of-pearl (© Dr Karl Shuker)

3. He offers many examples from ancient Chinese writings and from bird designs on the bronzewares of ancient China’s pre-Chin period (i.e. prior to 221 BC) that suggest a Paradisaea species as their model.

4. He presents material that he interprets as evidence for believing that as recently as 1100 AD (during the Sung Dynasty), southern China was home to two native species of bird of paradise, which have since become extinct.

From the examples of Shang Dynasty hieroglyphics depicting the ‘Feng’ and ‘Wind’ that Tzu-Chiang Chou provides, a certain, but by no means unequivocal, similarity to at least two different birds of paradise (greater, Paradisaea apoda, and king, Cicinnurus regius) is present, but his claim that a third example specifically comprises a depiction of a composite bird of paradise (created from the most striking characteristics of a wide range of different species) is less convincing. As for the wind connection, he points out that in Chinese the birds of paradise are referred to as ‘wind-birds’, because they fly against the wind.

 

Chromolithograph from 1900 depicting a male greater bird of paradise (top) and a male king bird of paradise (bottom), plus a six-wired bird of paradise (centre) (public domain)

Within the ancient Chinese texts, the Chinese phoenix is described as having colourful plumage, long tufts of feathers sprouting from its flanks, a fondness for dancing, and communal behaviour – all features shared by the Paradisaea birds of paradise (whose males do display in groups rather than singly). Conversely, in more recent Chinese accounts a very different phoenix is described - a somewhat grotesque entity with a snake’s neck, a tortoise’s shell, and a fishtail – but Tzu-Chiang Chou believes that this image is wholly imaginary, not based upon observations of real forms.

So far, then, Tzu-Chiang Chou’s evidence for the identification of the Chinese phoenix as a Paradisaea bird of paradise is quite persuasive, but his fourth point is much more contentious. Quoting from various early Chinese encyclopedias, he provides descriptions of two exceptionally handsome birds supposedly native to China in those long-departed days, at least according to the authors of the descriptions.

 

Male red bird of paradise, in Cassell's Book of Birds, 1870s (public domain)

One bird, allegedly inhabiting Canton Province during the Sung Dynasty, referred to by the natives as the feng-huang, and said to have long sashes of red plumes on its flanks, beneath its wings, is identified by Tzu-Chiang Chou as the red bird of paradise Paradisaea rubra. This species is officially known only from the Western Papuan islands of Saonet, Waigeu, and Batanta (and perhaps Ghemien too).

The other mystery bird, reported from Kwangsi Province, again during the Sung Dynasty, and called the u-feng or black phoenix, was reputedly bluish-green and purple, with a head crest and an elongated tail with bunches of feathers at each end. Tzu-Chiang Chou considers this to be the long-tailed (=black) sicklebill bird of paradise Epimachus fastosus (formerly magnus).

 

Two males and one female of the long-tailed sicklebill bird of paradise, painted by Richard Bowdler Sharpe (public domain)

These identifications, however, are far from precise. Goldie’s bird of paradise Paradisaea decora and Count Raggi’s P. raggiana also have sprays of long red plumes emerging from their flanks beneath their wings; and the sicklebills do not have crests – the equally long-tailed species of astrapia do, but (in common with the sicklebills) they do not have bunches of feathers at each end of their tails. In any event, I consider it highly unlikely that any genuine birds of paradise have ever been native to China, even if we accept Tzu-Chiang Chou’s claim that in earlier days its climate was much warmer, and hence closer to the tropical temperatures of New Guinea.

Ornithological experts believe that the birds of paradise originated in the mid-mountain forests of New Guinea, and as the present diversity of species progressively evolved, the family’s range gradually expanded, infiltrating north-eastern Australia as its distribution’s southernmost limit and extending as far to the west as the Moluccas (home to Wallace’s standardwing Semioptera wallacei and the paradise crow Lycocorax pyrrhopterus).

 

Richard Bowdler Sharpe's 1890s painting of a pair of Goldie's bird of paradise (public domain)

It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that if the family were to send representatives beyond the Moluccas, ultimately reaching southern China, it would do so either via the Philippines, a handy series of stepping stones to the Asian mainland and thence China, or via a longer Sulawesi-Borneo-Vietnam course. Yet there is no evidence for the former existence of birds of paradise in any of these countries, thereby undermining support for their onetime occurrence further north-west, in China itself.

A far more likely option is that early travellers visiting New Guinea arrived at China with preserved bird of paradise skins, and perhaps even some live specimens, whose outstanding appearance would guarantee their documentation in major Chinese texts of the day – their authors probably being unaware that these birds had originated from beyond China.

 

John Gould's painting of two adult male specimens of Count Raggi's bird of paradise (public domain)

Another legendary Chinese bird that may conceivably have been inspired at least in part by bird of paradise skins or specimens is the vermilion bird. Totally distinct from the feng-huang, this noble and elegant bird is a mythological spirit creature, one of the four symbols of the Chinese constellations. Representing the south of China and the summer season, it is very selective where it perches and what it eats, and its gorgeous plumage incorporates many different hues of reddish orange.

Sadly, however, like so much in cryptozoology, all of this is mere speculation, nothing but unconfirmed conjecture at present, especially as illustrations can be notoriously inaccurate or so stylized that the true morphological appearance of their original subjects remains obscure.

 

A Chinese phoenix exquisitely depicted by Katsushika Hokusai in c.1835 (public domain)

 

This ShukerNature blog article was adapted from a section in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited.

 

A large, modern-day, Chinese-style vase very handsomely decorated with a pair of traditionally-depicted feng-huang birds, photographed in daylight (on left) and at night (on right) (© Dr Karl Shuker)

 

THE TURKEY, THE TAPESTRY, AND SOME FOWL PLAY IN THE CATHEDRAL!

Section of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the alleged turkey (red-arrowed, in top border, left of centre), with a blue peacock to its immediate left - click picture to enlarge it (public domain)

Welcome to ShukerNature's contribution to the festive season, as the focus of this present article of mine is that most archetypal of Christmas avians, the turkey.

Although today they are familiar in domestic form throughout the world, turkeys are native New Worlders. Two species are recognised - the ocellated turkey Agriocharis ocellata, which is confined to Central America; and the common or North American turkey Meleagris gallopavo, which in the wild state occurs in the southeastern U.S.A. and Mexico. The domestic turkeys nowadays raised throughout the western world are descended from a southern Mexican subspecies of the common turkey, which first became known to Europeans when the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico during the first half of the 1500s, discovered domestic turkeys maintained by the Aztecs there, and brought some back with them to Spain. That is the official history of the turkey's arrival in the Old World, but there is a mystifying anachronism on record that offers up a very different scenario for consideration.

Measuring almost 230 ft long and 20 in tall, the Bayeux Tapestry, embroidered in southern England between 1066 and 1077, depicts in great detail the events leading up to the Norman invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and as such it is a highly significant historical document. This is why, therefore, one of the birds portrayed in the rows of creatures decorating the tapestry's borders has attracted appreciable historical (as well as cryptozoological) attention - because it bears somewhat of a resemblance to a turkey. Yet accepted history dictates that turkeys did not reach European shores from the New World for almost another 500 years.

Blue peacock with ornamental train fully expanded and displayed (public domain); and a close-up of its head, revealing its characteristic crest of racquet-tipped plumes (public domain)

Some historians have sought to reconcile this chronological discrepancy by claiming that the bird in question is not an accurate portrait of a turkey but is merely a poor depiction of a male blue peafowl Pavo cristatus (i.e. a peacock), which was certainly a popular dish, especially among the wealthy, in Europe at the time of the Bayeux Tapestry's creation (and for several subsequent centuries too).

Others, conversely, have boldly suggested that if the Vikings did indeed reach North America during the early years of the 11th Century AD, i.e. several centuries before Christopher Columbus (not to mention the Spanish conquistadors), perhaps they returned to Europe with some turkeys. This would therefore explain how an exclusively New World bird could appear on the Bayeux Tapestry later that same century.

Having closely scrutinised this controversial depiction, I remain somewhat nonplussed concerning the bird's identity, as none of the options on offer seems wholly satisfying.

A domestic male turkey, descended from the common or North American wild turkey (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Certainly, its body and head appear burlier than those of a typical blue peacock, and its tail is more reminiscent of a male turkey's when outsplayed than the disproportionately huge, arching train of a blue peacock. There is even a degree of similarity to the adult male of the capercaillie Tetrao urogallus, Europe's largest species of grouse, which existed in Britain at the time of the Norman Conquest (centuries later it became extinct here but has been successfully reintroduced into Scotland).

Yet the Bayeux mystery bird's head bears the blue peafowl's characteristic crest of racquet-tipped plumes – conspicuous only by their absence in turkeys and capercaillies (the latter species is also much darker than the Bayeux bird) – unless this feature was mistakenly added by the Bayeux illustrator, basing his depiction perhaps upon a faulty verbal description influenced by a peacock's morphology rather than upon firsthand sight of a turkey? By the same token, was it simply meant to represent a peahen, thus explaining the crest and also the pale, greyish plumage (typical for a peahen)? But if so, its large outsplayed tail would then be incorrect, unless once again the illustrator was not familiar with the finer points of such a bird's morphology and wrongly assumed that both peacock and peahen possess an extra-large train.

Or it might even represent an entirely fictitious, composite bird; after all, this elaborate tapestry contains a number of decidedly strange-looking creatures that seemingly owe little allegiance to the real world.

An adult male capercaillie  (© David Palmer/Wikipedia - CC BY 2.0 licence)

A further complication with the Bayeux case inadvertently stemmed from a short article by Maris Ross, published in London's Daily Mail newspaper on 31 August 1991, which briefly alluded to the turkey mystery. Accompanying Ross's article was a sketch prepared by one of the Daily Mail's resident cartoonists, Haro, depicting in his own distinctive, readily recognisable style an 11^th-Century man with a turkey.

Amusingly, albeit regrettably, Haro's sketch has since been reproduced in more than one account of the alleged Bayeux turkey under the mistaken assumption that it is a direct representation of this bird as it is depicted in the tapestry!

Indeed, the late anomalies chronicler William Corliss even lamented in an article for the May-June 1992 issue of his Science Frontiers periodical that a specific search for this particular illustration within the Bayeux Tapestry had been conducted but had failed to find it – which is hardly surprising! In the January-February 1996 issue of this same periodical, Corliss revealed that via a personal communication of 2 November 1995, the person who had informed him about the vain search had been Erik Ringdal Sørensen.

The short London Daily Mail article containing Haro's turkey-featuring illustration (© Daily Mail/Haro – reproduced here solely for educational, review purposes on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Notwithstanding such unfortunate confusion, the Bayeux turkey remains a valid mystery, whereas a second instance of controversial turkey depictions, featuring the infamous examples formerly decorating Schleswig's stately cathedral in Germany, was ultimately exposed as a turkey (or canard?) in every sense of the word!

The walls of Schleswig Cathedral in Germany are richly decorated with medieval murals. One of these, supposedly dating from around 1280, included a horizontal row of four unmistakable representations of a domestic turkey, complete with pendant beak wattle (snood), upraised fanned tail feathers, and large broad wings.

As with the Bayeux depiction, however, if these were genuine it would thus suggest that turkeys reached the Old World several centuries before their official arrival here with the conquistadors.

Two of the four turkey images formerly decorating Schleswig Cathedral (© Uli Poppe/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Curiously, no-one had noticed the turkey depictions in Schleswig Cathedral until after World War II, but during the early 1950s the reason for this odd oversight, and the even odder presence of the turkey depictions here anyway, were sensationally revealed - during an art forgery trial.

The accused in what became a truly sensational trial lasting from 10 August 1954 to 26 January 1955 was German painter Lother Malskat, who not only confessed to the charges brought against him, but also conceded that he was responsible for the Schleswig turkeys too!

Apparently, Malskat had been restoring some of the cathedral's original 13^th-Century murals just prior to World War II, and while doing so he had spotted an outline that reminded him of a turkey - so he skilfully painted one into the mural, followed by three others, thereby yielding a distinctive horizontally-arranged quartet of these zoogeographically anomalous birds!

A beautiful vintage illustration from 1894 depicting Schleswig Cathedral (public domain)

With the onset of the war, no-one had spotted Malskat's anachronistic additions straight away, so if it had not been for the forgery case, his turkeys may still have been perplexing scholars of art, zoology, and history even today. Instead, once his foul – or fowl! – play had been exposed there (which earned him a sentence of 18 months in jail), the turkeys were swiftly expunged from the cathedral's walls and more appropriate depictions painted in their stead by other, more reputable art restorers.

(For a very comprehensive and thoroughly fascinating Art & Antiques article from February 2012 by art historian Jonathan Keats documenting the extraordinary history behind Malskat's career and creations as an art forger, click here.)

As for the Bayeux mystery bird: if we are considering the prospect of an exotic species having been brought to England by early maritime explorers from some faraway native homeland several centuries before it had even been officially discovered in that land by western naturalists, there is one additional possibility that I have never previously seen put forward but which must surely be worth mulling over. Or, to put it another way: is it just me, or, if we ignore its crest, does the alleged Bayeux turkey look more than a little like a Mauritius dodo??

19th-Century engraving of the Mauritius dodo Raphus cucullatus, first officially recorded in 1598, by some Dutch sailors, and extinct by the end of the following century (public domain)

This ShukerNature blog article is an updated, expanded excerpt from my book Mysteries of Planet Earth: An Encyclopedia of the Inexplicable.